In the Eyes of Cloé Pitiot

“Awakening unknown emotions.” As curator of the Iris Van Herpen. Sculpting the Senses exhibition, Cloé Pitiot puts her own imagination at the heart of a landmark exhibition, with a unique soundtrack by Salvador Breed (who happens to be Van Herpen’s partner). At the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, more than one hundred haute couture pieces celebrate the extraordinary power of creation through a dialogue with art, fossils and coral relics from the natural sciences. Somewhere between metamorphosis and craftsmanship, bubbles suspended in space and a cabinet of curiosities, “Water and Dreams,” “Life in the Deep,” and “The Forces of Life” can be found among the nine sections of this unprecedented retrospective, breaking with the codes of museum representation. With more than 118,000 visitors already between November 29th through January 18th, the exhibition has proven a great success. 

A hybrid career

"I'm a registered architect who graduated in Nancy and Venice, and ended up with a PhD focusing on Jean Philippe Lenclos, a colour consultant. At the same time, from 2000 to 2009, I was a travel book illustrator. I travelled the world with my backpack and then, in 2010, I joined the Centre Pompidou as a design curator, where I stayed until 2018. Since then, I joined the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, where I oversee the Art Deco and Design collections.

A made-to-measure exhibition 

For this exhibition, Iris Van Herpen. Sculpting the Senses, which I curated, I worked with Louise Curtis, assistant curator. Olivier Gabet came up with the idea for the project because he trusted me at a time when I didn't necessarily feel legitimate to talk about fashion. I cannot thank him enough. For him, being an architect and a design curator meant that I was able to put things into perspective. It meant changing the way we look at things, getting inside the designer's head, understanding her sources of inspiration, and initiating a dialogue that has been going on for more than five years. He knew that Iris van Herpen worked in collaboration with artists and scientists. I didn't have the skills to include her in a retrospective exhibition, to place her in the history of fashion, but I wanted to convey her inspirations, her world, her approach, her sensitivity.

The genesis of an immersive journey  

Our personalities are a good match, with shared passions and hypersensitivity. We worked from moodboards, in a very open and generous exchange about every field she could explore, from literature and philosophy to travel and science. We designed this exhibition like an experiment. We approached the subject in both a scientific and emotional way, reflecting on sound, colour and texture in an aesthetic dialogue.

A school for the senses 

We conceived this exhibition as an immersive journey. We wanted the public to leave the exhibition having enjoyed an experience. We drew on our lucid dreaming knowledge for her, and hypnosis for me, and we studied manuscripts at The Embassy of the Free Mind in Amsterdam. We reasoned with each other in this spirit of freedom. Then there was research into the sciences, thanks to her interest in the living world, microscopic beings, viruses and bacteria. We spent hours talking, working in her studio, discussing, researching, thinking as a team with her and her assistant Christian Reiche and with Louise. Perhaps the fact that I'm an architect gave me a more imaginative approach to the design of this exhibition, with its emphasis on stimulating the senses and the emotions.

Evolving journey 

In Brisbane, in the north-east of Australia, at QAGOMA (Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art), where the exhibition will be presented next June, we will be going beyond sight and sound to involve touch. The exhibition will then travel to Asia, before returning to the Netherlands at the Kunsthal Rotterdam. What makes me proudest is the joy of visitors when they leave the exhibition, when I hear that it has awakened unknown emotions in them. That was our objective with Iris van Herpen: to offer beauty, dreamlike emotions and escapism. Thanks to her work and her sensitivity, we have created a kind of dream, an exhibition that can be experienced like a distant journey.

Iris Van Herpen. Sculpting the Senses, Musée des Arts décoratifs, until April 28th, 2024